News

ETAF participates in intermediaries’ tax planning consultation

As the scandals around LuxLeaks and Panama Papers are still present, the European Commission focuses its policies on tax transparencyand tax intermediaries to fight harmful and illegal tax practices. With this in mind, DG TAXUD launched a consultation on “Disincentives for advisers and intermediaries for potentially aggressive tax planning schemes”.

On 21 February 2017, the European finance ministers reached an agreement in the ECOFIN-Council on provisions to fight corporate tax avoidance implicating third countries. The proposal aims at closing down “hybrid mismatches” between the tax systems of EU-countries and third countries and thus preventing corporate groups from taking advantage of the disparities between several tax jurisdictions.

Commission on administrative cooperation between Member States in the field of VAT

The fight against VAT fraud is a top priority of the European Union and keeps the European Commission on its toes. On 28 February 2017 DG TAXUD published a road map for the legislative proposal on administrative cooperation between Member States in the field of VAT. The Commission aims at closing the so-called ‘VAT-gap’, which causes serious losses of Member States’ revenues, affects the EU budget in a negative way and distorts competition within the Single Market.

Commissioner Moscovici at the ETAF Launching Conference: „We are in a new tax era”

On 28 September 2016, the European Tax Adviser Federation – ETAF, whichunites more than 230,000 tax advisers from Germany, France and Italy, presented itself for the first time to a broad international audience on the occasion of its launching conference “Europe’s tax agenda for the future"

ETAF participates in the consultation on the reform of the notification procedure

On 18 April, ETAF submitted its contribution to the consultation on the reform of the notification procedure (Services Directive). This consultation stands in the framework of the internal market strategy of the European Commission

Data protection package ratified

On 14 April 2016, the European Parliament officially ratified the new data protection package, consisting of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Directive on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities.

Tax transparency: country-by-country reporting shall now be made public

On 12 April, the European Commission launched a new proposal for a Directive which imposes on multinational groups the publication of a yearly report on the profit and tax paid and other tax-related information. Only recently, on 8 March 2016, the EU Finance Ministers unanimously agreed on corresponding reporting obligations of multinational groups, however only vis-à-vis their respective national tax authorities. The new proposal is about the additional publication of this information.

VAT Action Plan of the European Commission

On 23 March 2016, the European Commission published its VAT Action Plan for the coming years. The overall objective is to modernise the current VAT framework. As one of the main points, the Action Plan provides a review of the current rules for VAT rates. The Commission explicitly regrets that e-books and e-newspapers cannot benefit from reduced rates under the current regime. It also states that it would be "slow and difficult" for the Member States to extend reduced rates to new areas, because such decisions always require unanimity among the 28 member states.